Christmas Casualties

So you can't get a large number of people together (we had all of Mike's family in town) without a few casualties. Our first was Caleb. Christmas Eve he didn't want Mike to change his diaper, so he tried to pull away when Mike grabbed his arm. All the sudden he's a puddle of tears on the ground and it's not getting better. Anyone familiar with nurse-maid's elbow? I always thought it was the actual bone in the elbow dislocating, but I guess it's just a ligament that pops out of place. So 2 hours and $75 later Caleb was back home super happy because his arm was fixed. It's a really simple fix. So simple in fact that a couple days later when our nephew did the same thing, his dad just grabbed his arm, did what the doctor did and fixed his son's arm instantaneously. Mike had looked up how to fix it on the Internet and wanted to do it himself, and was a little bummed his brother-in-law got to fix his son's arm and I made him take Caleb to the ER.

A couple days later Mike was at Urgent Care with a different brother-in-law. They had gone mountain biking and about 20 minutes into their ride Jason got a spine from a cactus stuck into his finger. It went through his finger and was pushing against the skin on the opposite side and broke off so that there was no way to pull it out. So again, a couple hours later, they were back home without much biking and Jason having had his finger cut open, pliers shoved inside the incision and (finally) a spine-free finger.

Mike's dad was our next casualty, he caught some bug and had to miss two days of vacation staying in his room with a fever, cold symptoms and throwing up. No fun! Thankfully nothing serious happened, and we really had a great time together. Maybe when I get pictures from the others I'll post about all the fun things we did.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, Brayden's bed as our last casualty. When we bought it the sales lady tried so hard to assure me that "engineered birch wood" was more durable and hard than regular solid birch. Yeah right. We didn't believe her, but it's hard to pass up $200 for good looking bunk beds and considering the price of really good, solid hardwood bunkbeds seems to be between $1200 and $1600, we figured we could replace these cheapos many times and it would still be more cost efficient. At last it will be cost efficient if nobody jumps on them because they will break in half. Literally. I wish I had a picture. Thank goodness for a handy husband who had the bed better than new the next morning with one trip to Ace Hardware. I'm still glad that we went with the cheap beds, and I'm glad we knew the sales lady at Art Van was blowing smoke when we bought the beds or we might have been pretty disappointed. "Just don't be disappointed. Don't be it." (Caleb)